


Mask

by Cuzan Denbo (netherworld22)



Category: The Epic of Gilgamesh
Genre: Alternate Universe, LGBTQ Themes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:54:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28092015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/netherworld22/pseuds/Cuzan%20Denbo
Summary: Mask is a Short Story retelling in a contemporary American setting of a climax scene in The Epic of Gilgamesh in which the heroes confront the monster in the netherworld.





	Mask

Mask

by Cuzan Denbo

“I’m a monster,” Gurd Khase naked shuddering muttering into both hands rubbing the tears from his face trying to shake the nightmare pushing away from Ethan’s embrace.  
“Enough! Nightmares every night and morning for a week!” Ethan Dewar said flinging aside the Zuni indigo blanket slapping Gurd’s hands away while straddling him on the big Parisian-blue, leather sofa.  
Drawing a deep breath eyes briefly avoiding the anguished face, Ethan glanced around the first floor of Gurd’s condo in Albuquerque. Twisting his neck working out the kinks after sleeping on a sofa barely large enough to accommodate two men over six-foot-two, each two-hundred-plus solid pounds.  
The mantel over the fireplace and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on both sides on the west wall were carved with images of cowboys, American Indians, livestock, and wildlife no two images the same. Dark hardwood framing the lighter panels. Glittering blue sand in the lower globe of a seven-foot, sapphire-enamel grandfather hourglass in the southwest corner next to a big window.  
Light from the rising sun filtering softly through the sheer curtains hung on the window framed with Rubber Tree plants. Blooming Gardenia lined the long, deep window sill fragrant potted jasmine hung from the ceiling. Prints of Maxfield Parish southwestern landscapes hung on the walls characteristic cobalt-blue highlights. A second big window with a profusion of plants. The dining set of heavy, rough-hewn table and ladder-back chairs with cattle horns extending 90 degrees from each side at the top.  
Pale-turquoise carpeting. The two-foot-tall, bronze copies of Bucking Bronco, Riding down the Buffalo, and Mustangs by the sculptor Alexander Proctor. The plush leather, Parisian-blue chairs with big brass tacks. The coffee and smaller tables with polished tops on legs of tangled driftwood roots. A portable hourglass with azure sand, spherical candles various hues of gray, distinctive black ceramics of the Tewa potter, Maria Martinez.  
On the east side, the lower cabinets hand-carved matched those on the wall over and under the sink. Lapis lazuli, ceramic tiles on the floor. A limestone counter extended about ten feet an electric range in the middle. Bouquet of red roses in a vase. A double-door, stainless steel refrigerator.  
“Here’s a riddle for you,” Ethan whispering hands settling gripping Gurd’s chest pushing him into the large, silk pillows woven in the pattern of Georgia O’Keefe’s vivid painting Blue, Black and Grey.  
“Seem like the right time, Ethan?” Gurd asked angrily, gasping, confused wiping away tears squinting at the big hairy, bearded, green-eyed redhead heavy on his stomach.  
“Time will tell, love,” Ethan replied forcefully between his teeth, lowering his face close to Gurd’s, eyes locking.  
Ethan remembered the first time he looked into Gurd’s eyes. Ethan was traveling in the Jungian collective unconscious—the world scientists thought of as a parallel universe and the ancients believed to be the Netherworld. His gateway to the otherworld was yoga meditation. In the underworld, Gurd’s eyes were fiery yellow, not deep sapphire.  
In the collective unconscious, a diffuse light filled the fresh, crystalline air during the day but Ethan could determine no point in the aureate sky to indicate the sun as the source. No moon glowed or stars twinkled in the indigo night as though the skies in the netherworld began where the earth’s atmosphere ended.  
Everything glistened and glowed vividly from the inner energy sources of each animal and plant. Ethan thought the contrasts between brilliant living things and the subtle hues of the sky were similar to the art of post-impressionists van Gogh, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. He was sure these artists must have gotten their inspirations by visiting the otherworld.  
In this magical realm, Ethan’s guide, glittering hobgoblin-fairy Puck, explained the chakras of each creature regulated the current of the gleaming energy streaming out from the seven centers. A glimmering, cool type of plasma not known to exist in the corporeal world. The sparkling, coruscating surface of the animated creatures resembled the roiling, gaseous-fluid surface of the sun Ethan had seen in astronomy programs.  
No skin or other types of membrane to restrain the flow was visible. The surface created by the surge from within could be smooth as a river-worn cobble on some creatures, bumpy and rugged as tumbled-scree on others or faceted like quartz crystal.  
Puck revealed that every creature living in the physical dimension has a corresponding life energy in the netherworld. To Ethan’s surprise and delight no person in the collective unconscious appeared as they did in the corporeal world.  
Some were truly phantasmagorical surpassing in freakishness the images of Egyptian and Hindu deities. The sights in the collective unconscious provided unlimited challenges to Ethan’s perceptive faculties, stimulation to his brain expanding his mind on the human experience. That, after all, was the goal of yoga meditation.  
Shimmering, faceted human bodies with emerald-crocodile or topaz-lion heads were not uncommon. Ethan had observed twinkling scarlet-ruby satyrs and sparkling azure-aquamarine centaurs galloping in Gauguin landscapes. He had mingled with glowing amber, six-armed men sporting iridescent, hummingbird-feather-mustaches and incandescent, ostrich-necked women wearing opalescent coiled-serpent chokers in Toulouse-Lautrec cityscapes and nightclubs. He had rambled with Puck in fields of van Gogh-sunflowers where insects with human heads and stained-glass wings frolicked in twinkling pollen.  
Ethan learned from Puck when his consciousness withdrew from his physical body during meditation to join his corresponding unconsciousness in the netherworld the two morphed into his avatar. He was aware avatars possessed characteristics of both dimensions, most notably the presence of visible skin veiling the roiling surfaces.  
While traveling alone in the netherworld at the age of fifteen, Ethan’s avatar ventured into a landscape of glimmering Gauguin-mountains cleaved by deep ravines and broad gorges brimming with towering, luminous van Gogh-cypress. Beneath the glowing fronds of the forest were sprinklings of twinkling citrine or ruby mushrooms on the ground and sparkling amethyst, amber, and jade lichen on the trunks and boulders.  
In one of these forested canyons, Ethan discovered a melancholy, solitary person about his age. Ethan was only briefly taken aback by the sight. In the following instant, he fell in love, a bond that deepened over the years during Ethan’s subsequent visits to the netherworld.  
The creature had glossy, black horns of a bull-calf, the fluorescent, copper-green head, limbs, and body of a youth, tawny paws of a lion, dark glittering vulture claws, and a serpent-head tail. The vivid surface of the creature’s face and body churned and roiled like the sun the hair on his head and paws undulating like tiny, solar plasma-streamers. Eyes like molten gold.  
Halfway through that first lengthy conversation, the youth paused to rub his gleaming eyes with his glimmering lion paw. Opening the jade case suspended around his neck by a cord, Ethan got a brief glimpse at the reflection of the young creature in the magical obsidian mirror Puck had given him, before quickly closing the case.  
The image that emerged in living color on the polished surface was the appearance of the human correlate in the physical world. The visual impression of a handsome youth with thick, dark hair, a high broad forehead, straight eyebrows and nose, chiseled, heart-shaped mouth with full lips above a strong chin with a cleft burned into Ethan’s memory.  
Ethan had met Gurd in the corporeal dimension a week ago. Love at first sight was mutual. Gurd was surprised. Ethan was not.  
Ethan had listened to Gurd’s inner-most secrets of the past and dreams of the future for the past few days. Now Ethan felt he needed to reveal a secret and his plan for the future.  
“What’s the oldest recurring nightmare in European literature?” Ethan held Gurd’s wrists down tight on each side of the pillow. He gently kissed the tracks of Gurd’s tears.  
“No idea,” Gurd replied frowning lips twisting, chest heaving between Ethan’s knees. “My tutor wasn’t into literature. Didn’t do much traveling in English-speaking countries.”  
“In Beowulf,” Ethan said eyes soft, “the monster Grendel symbolizes the nightmares destroying—figuratively speaking—consuming King Hrothgar’s warriors.”  
“Okay, yeah, Beowulf,” Gurd holding returning Ethan’s gaze, calming his breathing the agony of the nightmare ebbing.  
“Who sent the nightmares, symbolized by Grendel, into the night to consume the lives of all those sleeping warriors in the king’s hall? The monster consumed the lives. That he devoured the bodies is a kenning, in old Norse,” Ethan continued with a gentle kiss on Gurd’s heart-shaped mouth full lips.  
“Grendel’s mother sent him,” Gurd replied eyes searching, anger and confusion dwindling. Wondering where this was going, watching Ethan’s Celtic-sculpted face, milk-white skin, hollow cheeks, impish nose, cupid lips, elfish ears, beneath the beard a jutting chin.  
“Where did she live—the murky mere—being a Norse kenning for what? Who went there to kill her, and what was he?” Ethan asked noting Gurd’s features were relaxing. The broad brow smooth the mouth in repose.  
“She lived in the collective unconscious, the Netherworld,” Ethan’s eyes narrow glittering, “so Beowulf—who killed Grendel’s mother—was a shaman, a Norse traditional healer.  
“Where did you come up with that?” Gurd blinking astonished.  
“The Netherworld!” Ethan answered eyes wide. “I started traveling to the underworld when I was a kid… like you did.  
“Now to the point of the riddle,” Ethan pausing for another brief kiss. “In the Netherworld what did Grendel’s mother symbolize?”  
“The mother embodied the post-traumatic stress disorder of the king’s warriors, a collective, or mass-PTSD experience,” Gurd sighed closing his eyes breathing calm ache subsiding.  
“Right!” Ethan said releasing Gurd’s chest. “Mass psychogenic illness, or disorder. It affects members of a close cohesive social group. A stress response just like your PTSD.”  
“Your monster… the one giving you nightmares and preventing you from entering the collective unconscious… in the netherworld is the equivalent of Grendel’s mother sending flashbacks of the violence and nightmares,” Ethan’s whispered voice tense.  
“Grendel’s mother in the Jungian collective unconscious—was the MPI affecting the psyche of the Norse warriors. Your monster in the netherworld is affecting your psyche keeping you from doing what you want with your life.  
“I know what you want to do with your life,” Ethan murmured placing a hand gently on the side of Gurd’s face. “You want to heal children as the Oromo shaman healed you of Scarlet fever when you were a kid traveling in Nigeria, but you can’t get into the netherworld because Brónach-tarbh is standing there guarding the entrance with his sword. The otherworld is where shamans go to eliminate or disable monsters causing disease and disorders of the psyche in the physical dimension. The monsters of myth are really the monsters in the netherworld.  
“We’ll go in and kill Brónach so you’ll be healthy in mind and body,” Ethan’s eyes soft, voice confident, reassuring. “That cave he’s always hanging around is your normal portal into the Underworld—lucid dreaming—the way you entered until monster- Brónach stopped you when you were nineteen. You have to find another way in so we can surprise him from another direction.”  
“What… bull?” Gurd asked, frowning, eyes squinting, grabbing Ethan’s red locks.  
“You understand Scots-Gaelic?” Frozen, Ethan staring back realizing his mistake. He’d blurted too much too quickly.  
“A few words,” Gurd replied face wooden eyes expressive. “Horse is each. Goat is gobhar. Sheep is caoraich. Bull is tarbh. I lived for a while on my aunt’s farm in Scotland.”  
“Brónach-tarbh, Sad-bull. What I call him,” Ethan replied eyes shifting, elf-ears turning red biting his cupid-lips.  
“Ethan… you have a relationship with… my monster in the collective unconscious?” Gurd whispering incredulous, indigo eyes searching, fingers interlacing gripping the curls firmer, shaking Ethan’s head.  
“Well, yes, and no, Hurdy Gurdy,” Ethan said exhaling, grimacing, considering where to begin. “I’ll explain, but first what did the old Oromo shaman call you—your avatar.”  
“Sword Dancer,” Gurd replied, face wooden eyes crinkling, patient, mouth stern. “I’m Circassian, ancestors from the Caucasus. We sword dance. The Cossacks learned the tradition from us.”  
“Okay,” Ethan said settling on Gurd’s stomach. “You, conscious-Gurd… avatar, Sword Dancer… collective unconscious identity, Brónach-tarbh.  
“Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious,” Ethan continued, running his fingers through his red curls scratching his head taking Gurd’s hand in his. “String theory proposes there are twenty-six parallel universes. The Aztecs believed in thirteen underworlds.  
“Me, Ethan,” he said pounding his hairy chest with his free hand. “Avatar—Joker, netherworld-name, Gobhar-làn, Fiery Goat. Big yellow-red fellow with long spreading, ribbed horns, human body, goat hind legs and hooves. None of our netherworld-correlates look like we do here… centaurs, satyrs and harpies… but Brónach-tarbh takes the prize for freaky, mostly bullish,” eyes rolling body trembling theatrically.  
“All living things in the underworld are made of some cool, lava-like plasma unknown in this world, right? The plasma appears to surge from internal energy centers and there’s no outer or surface membrane, skin?” Ethan asked checking their secret experiences were the same, watching Gurd nod in agreement.  
“Okay! So, Joker met Brónach-tarbh at about the age of fifteen and the two developed a… bond,” Ethan explained eyebrows rising head canting left. “That’s why the moment our eyes met for the first time in the physical dimension we felt like we’d known each other forever, right?”  
“Right,” Gurd responded. “Bond?”  
“Okay!” Ethan said gripping Gurd’s hand tighter. “Love. I love you. I love Brónach-tarbh. I love all of you.”  
“How’re you certain I’m Brónach-tarbh’s correlate?” Gurd asked eyes narrowing.  
“I have an obsidian mirror—like the Aztec priests and gods—hold it up to someone in the netherworld when he’s not looking and I see what he looks like in this dimension,” Ethan replied grinning.  
“We should kill Brónach?” Gurd said brows arching mouth frowning.  
“So Gurd can live a happy fulfilling life, no more PTSD,” Ethan responded.  
“You ever considered what kind of relationship Gobhar-làn and Brónach-tarbh have?’ Gurd asked drawing a deep breath. “I mean when your consciousness isn’t melded with Gobhar-làn—that’s how your avatar is created—when the two… physical consciousness and netherworld unconscious are combined. You think maybe they’re snuggled up now like we are? In the Netherworld?”  
“This week with you has been heaven and hell—maybe that’s why I… or my unconscious… blurted the truth so we could handle this together,” Ethan responded sighing flopping on his side next to Gurd.  
#  
“You think Picasso had a thing for bulls?’ Ethan asked as Gurd took a sip of water in the Lebanese restaurant near the University of New Mexico.  
The place was crowded and lively with conversation and laughter of affluent international students. A man strummed on an acoustic baglama in the shaded, outdoor hookah bar, ceiling fans rotating. The tables and chairs were black lacquer, table cloths white. On the walls hung Picasso ink drawings: Picasso-the-Bull-and-Me, Bullfighter, Bull Fight Scene, Bullfight III, and Don Quixote framed in black. Potted palms and exotic cactus stood in the corners and windows.  
“What’s your idea for ridding me of my PTSD-monster, Ethan?” Gurd’s face somber, gazing at the two big Mezza boards the waitress delivered.  
“What’s this stuff, Hurdy Gurdy?” Ethan asked, falafel in his hand hovering above the board, poised to dig in.  
“That is baba ghanoush, mostly eggplant and garlic. That’s muhammara, red peppers, walnut, and spice,” Gurd said pointing stuffing pita bread loaded with fresh tabouli into his mouth. “That’s black-bean humus.”  
“My idea is like a rodeo bull, a hybrid,” Ethan said lightly, holding Gurd’s gaze. “Did the Pueblo Indians use peyote in the curing rituals or healing ceremonies they held in kivas?”  
“Well, you are a rodeo clown, Ethan,” Gurd replied sipping water. “Possibly, but I don’t know of any evidence of Puebloans using peyote.”  
“Bullfighter is the current term for what I do,” Ethan said eyes dropping to the board briefly, contemplating the choices. “I think you and I should excavate an ancient Anasazi kiva. There’s a sipapu, the symbolic entrance to the Otherworld, in the bottom at the center of every kiva, right? You’re an archaeologist. You must know of a few kivas in remote places around here.”  
“Yeah,” Gurd responded face stony, eyes crinkling distant thoughtful. “There are a couple of small kivas—nine feet across maybe eight feet deep—I’ve detected while conducting ground penetrating radar investigations.”  
“You sip a little peyote tea in the kiva when the sipapu is uncovered,” spoken quietly while spooning tabouli onto fresh pita, “pop into the collective unconscious. I’ll join you there through my regular avenue, yoga-meditation. We kill the monster,” taking a bite, face scrunching in pleasure jaws working.  
“Got any peyote?” Gurd inquired calmly staring as Ethan raised his eyes.  
“Yeah, Hurdy Gurdy,” Ethan replied clearing his throat and winking. “A gift from an American Indian who severed the plant from the earth. She assured me the proper rituals were observed to placate the spirit of the plant.”  
“Let’s do it,” Gurd voice steady resolute, certain he preferred killing Brónach—the part of his psyche torturing him—rather than committing suicide to end the torment. He was sure of Ethan’s love for him, uncertain about the strength of Gobhar’s love for Brónach. Uncertainty and apprehension budding into anxiety.  
“You understand under normal circumstances an avatar in the collective unconscious is an amalgam of the consciousness and unconsciousness. That’s what gives the avatar the facility, the strength to operate in the Netherworld,” Gurd said, dipping pita into muhammara, watching Ethan nodding. “So you realize my avatar will be virtually useless without Brónach, who is in control of a large part of my unconscious psyche-energy in the Underworld, and who we plan to kill?”  
“I believe I have a solution, something I got in the underworld,” Ethan replied smiling.  
#  
Ethan was vigorously shaking the rocker-screen a paper artifact-bag clenched in his teeth when he suddenly realized all he could hear was the rippling of the Pecos River, larks singing and leaves rustling on the cottonwood trees. No scrap of shovel or trowel on rock or sand. Glancing down into the stone-walled kiva, he saw Gurd in the dappled sunlight rigid, a statue gazing to the east over the river.  
“No!” Ethan rasping quietly, dropping the bag easing the screen to the ground among the Black-eyed Susan.  
Crouching, Ethan walked softly around the kiva kneeling, eyes level with Gurd’s. Ethan’s eyes met the flashback-thousand-yard-stare.  
“Noooo, Gurd, don’t let him take you here, now!” Ethan whispering slipping silently into the kiva.  
“I’m going to put my arms around you, Gurd,” Ethan said in an even voice gently embracing him sensing the chill of Gurd’s dust-coated, perspiring skin. “I’m going to hold you, Gurd, okay, for a while?”  
“Gurd, I love you,” Ethan murmured resting his chin on Gurd’s cold shoulder.  
Ethan was instantly apprehensive when Gurd’s arm slowly raised, hand gripping the back of Ethan’s neck, forefinger twining into the red curls. Ethan leaned slightly away from Gurd’s shoulder to watch his face, the long stare.  
The dappling shadows moved eastward. The larks sang and the river rippled quietly. Ethan felt Gurd warming relaxing, sweat pouring. The long stare shorter, coming closer to the here and now. Clear indigo eyes locking on green eyes.  
#  
The New Mexico sun was high and hot when Gurd and Ethan resumed the excavation after a refreshing frolic in the Pecos River. Invigorated by the strong scent of sage, feeling energized, a bodily craving for more physical activity. Time passed quickly.  
At dusk, Gurd muttered incoherently brows knitting, wiping his face with a bandanna replacing the camera in its case tapping the computer keyboard. He was vaguely aware of the rocker-screen collapsing, crinkle of paper bags as Ethan packed artifacts, steam hissing from a teapot on the campfire.  
Gurd judged he was thirty centimeters from the floor of the kiva, and the opening of the sipapu. The lowering visibility prevented him from digging deeper. He was exhausted, his bare, tanned skin covered with dust streaked with rivulets of sweat, his hands blistered and bloody.  
Gurd stared down at the top of the globular object in the center of the excavation, trying to decide if it was a big cobble or an inverted ceramic pot. He wasn’t sure because it was firmly in the grip of a cottonwood root extending across the kiva. He leaned his shovel and trowel against the brown stones of the kiva wall, accepted the cup of steaming peyote tea from Ethan.  
“I’ve never brewed that stuff,” Ethan warned hopping into the kiva, carefully moving the shovel, settling into a lotus position.  
Gurd nodded, taking a long sip, setting the cup on the rim of the kiva. He leaned his head back listening to magpies squawking, the river rippling. Watching the stars pop into the clear, indigo sky in the east, the green leaves of the cottonwoods rippling, the new, crescent moon sinking on the pink and mauve, western horizon. The smell of sage and pine.  
“Sit down here lean against my chest,” Ethan suggested, adjusting the cord around his neck from which was suspended the bag of the gold pellets he stole from the netherworld-forge of the giant blacksmith, Hasammeli. He folded his hands over Gurd’s heart as Gurd reclined against him.  
#  
The Netherworld was as spectacular and dazzling as Gurd remembered it. Everything glowed and sparkled at night more vividly from the inner sources of energy within each plant and creature. The motion of the brilliant, sparkling, coruscating surfaces of animated creatures resembled lava-like plasma. The motion was less dramatic in the gently glowing, bioluminescent plants more like languidly billowing smoke but equally bright.  
Gurd thought the Netherworld felt smaller, somehow more cramped. At the same time, he sensed it was more substantial and extensive than it seemed in his youthful excursions.  
Turning taking in the radiant Gauguin-landscape, Gurd gaped at his appearance identical to Ethan’s. He was wearing the traditional Spanish bullfighter costume: a plain, white camisa and narrow black tie, a twinkling, breathtakingly gaudy, heavily jeweled and brocaded chaquetilla, tie-dyed tights, gartered at the knees with gold tassels. Instead of the orthodox black montera, a cap with furry, Mickey-Mouse ears trembling, twitching, and swiveling in a life-like manner.  
“Now! You’re dressed to kill!” Ethan exclaimed solemnly, eyes locking with Gurd’s.  
“Ethan! You clown!” Gurd whispered.  
“Bullfighter! Swallow these,” Ethan said handing Gurd two grains of gold from Hasammeli’s forge.  
“Now look at me, Gurd,” Ethan said earnestly capturing Gurd’s gaze. “Do not ever look into Brónach’s eyes.”  
“Okay,” Gurd responded nodding pressing his furry hat down on his head face resolute, agonizing uncertainty and misgivings blossoming in his chest. “You know where he is so lead the way,”  
#  
On the third day of their trek, Gurd suddenly noticed Joker-Ethan contorting. The matador costume and avatar-skin stretching, bulging from internal pressure, the twitchy-eared hat bouncing falling.  
Instantly dreamlike, Gurd’s awareness zoomed out, fish-eye lens. Glowing cypresses with glistening, deep-emerald fronds. The amber and amethyst lichens sparkling medallions on the tree trunks and boulders. The glittering, iridescent mist hovering among the trunks and branches rippling gently, languidly. The Northern Lights undulating over the ground. Sensing the countless, opalescent grains of sand like twinkling seed pearls beneath his bare feet.  
“You!” Brónach thundered arm extended pointing a luminous vulture’s claw at Ethan.  
Gurd reeled at the shattering volume of the voice in his head. Eyes bulging as though the sound was trying to escape from his skull through the sockets. Arms jerking stiffly outward away from his body. Teeth gritting, torso arching backward from the waist. Head and neck flipping back hat flying. He felt his throbbing blood vessels near bursting from his sweating skin. Mouth wide gasping trying to draw in air.  
“I should have killed you long ago when you came snooping around my forest!” Brónach bellowed, his scaly, bronze-green surface surging, shimmering, viscous lava. The fiber of the dark hair on his buffalo head and shoulders plasma flaring. Glittering, black horns, and claws coruscating. Lightning storming in his glaring yellow eyes. Neon tail-serpent slithering, laser-like beams shooting from its roving crimson eyes. Black hooves glistening.  
Lurching, shuddering, his brain numbed with pain, mind disoriented by terror Ethan confused fascinated struggling to focus on Brónach-tarbh’s dazzling form.  
“This is how you return the gift of your life? My love? You bring Him here to kill me?” Brónach roared black, glistening, buffalo lips curling glossy nostril flaring.  
The voice harsh and strange to Gurd’s ears. The sound of Brónach in Gurd’s mind reverberating intimate… familiar.  
“We better rethink this whole thing, get outta here, maybe get you some professional help,” Ethan’s voice garbled guttural.  
The utterance troublesome, confusing. The sound resonating in Gurd’s heart. Uncertainty, doubt and anxiety blooming painfully.  
Gurd glancing from the shimmering, sparkling bronze-green giant to Joker-Ethan. Cringing, cowering Ethan’s shape shifting-pixels scrambling, jolting. Image flickering, smearing. Part clownish Joker, part sparkling, red-gold, horned Gobhar-làn. Growing taller brawny.  
Twisting, straining, achingly upright blinking, Gurd’s struggles a mad dance to keep track of Ethan and Brónach. Desperately straining for clarity amid the phantasmagorical.  
Gurd crouching, dodging the glinting fangs, snapping mouth of the luminous, scaly, serpentine tail. Creeping hurriedly toward the entrance to Brónach’s cave, escape to the physical dimension. Ducking and skirting branches. Mist swirling trees twirling. Gurd stumbling crashing to his hands and knees crawling.  
Ethan-Ghobar indistinct, wavering, stretching, crackling, boiling clouds crowding a red-gold sunset. Hoovering protectively over Gurd.  
Brónach-tarbh following. Sparkling dust and glimmering pearls swirling. Galaxies twinkling in the wake of heavy, gleaming hooves.  
“And you!” Brónach seething scowling at Gurd. The voice making Gurd’s eyes wobble, head ache, the ground shake, air shimmer crazily. “Did you trick this Person into believing he convinced you to do this? Who is deceiving who and for what?  
“Tricksters!” Brónach shouting flinging his arms up body pulsing, flaring from spectral to blinding luminescence, eyes glaring. Scaly tail lashing through the iridescent mist.  
Gurd dragging over the lurching ground wrestling to control his limbs struggling not to reach out embrace Brónach. Gripped by the pain in his head, the agony in his heart and mind Gurd jostled by the swaying earth. Slithering away from Gobhar-làn’s massive, flaring, hairy, flickering crimson-gold body. Gurrd’s eyes swiveling from giant to giant.  
Gobhar’s glowing golden horns, crimson eyes now level with Brónach’s flaring, yellow eyes glittering black horns. Gazes locking fierce love turning to undying hate.  
Uncertainty a dying flower.  
On his hands and knees, Gurd flinging twinkling dust and pearls at Brónach’s face. The opalescent sand clinging to the glistening sweat on Gurd’s gleaming garments, glistening, sweaty hands and face. Collapsing onto his stomach, trembling, jerking arms stretching, spasmodic hands groping for more sand.  
Blindly reaching forward, Gurd grasping an object exposed by the shifting sand near the mouth of the cave. Sensing Brónach’s sudden fear and longing for him.  
Quaking, Gurd stood lifting, pulling the object from the opalescent sand. Brónach’s prismatic sword flashing dripping tiny pearls. Gurd rising, in command of his muscles the sword rendering balance bestowing clarity.  
Suddenly the whispering, shimmering Northern Lights curling coiling into a growling whirlwind whipping forcefully around them. The fierce winds reverberating with discordant echoes engulfing all three of them. Constricting forcing Gurd closer to Gohbar and Brónach.  
“Kill him!” Gobhar yelled, crimson mouth wide, lips trembling, fiery, plasma goat-beard wagging. Head swinging, sweeping horns flashing, sparkling brighter.  
“Kill him!” Gobhar screamed. Thick gruff voice rising to a grating pitch above the howling whirlwind.  
“No!” Brónach shouted falling to his knees. “I can be your servant. Do not listen to this Tricky Person! He will Trick you again! He tricked me with his love!”  
Gurd in full command of his limbs, swirling legs kicking high swinging the sword. Brónach falling to his knees golden eyes pleading. Gobhar-làn statue-still crimson eyes curiously watching Gurd.  
“Kill him!” fiery Gobhar thundering guttural glaring over Gurd down at gleaming Brónach heaving, glittering sweating, hands clasp before him.  
Discordant, soaring echoes bouncing around the contracting whirlwind. Catching, lifting the sword in Gurd’s grip. Sword glimmering brighter, slicing through the swirling, scintillating mist. The impact of the glowing weapon severing Brónach-tarbh’s shaggy head from his thick neck. Jarring Gurd, twirling him dizzily back toward the realm of consciousness.  
The final image of his netherworld-self lifting his head from his fetal position rising spreading his arms shedding the form of the gleaming monster like fiery filaments of flaring plasma spinning away from the sun remaining on Gurd’s retina for the first few moments in the corporeal world.  
His first sight was of Ethan eyes wide, chest heaving, sweat glistening standing against the stone wall. Arms and legs spread against the grainy sandstone in the early shadows and sunlight peeking over the horizon. Following Ethan’s horrified stare, Gurd glanced down the handle of the shovel in his bloody hands to the floor of the kiva. Cradled in the blade of the shovel amid splinters of cottonwood root, rested, not an inverted pot or a cobble, but an ancient human skull. Hollow eyes staring at the sky mouth gaping. Below it, the open sipapu.  
Trembling, Gurd dropped the shovel. Wiping his wooden face with his bloody hands, Gurd convulsing, retching weeping.  
Instantly recovering his corporeal senses, Ethan lurched from the kiva pulling Gurd with him. They stumbled down to the river plunging into the cool water. Surfacing to float together quietly. Under the bright morning sun, Ethan gently bathed Gurd’s face washing away the tears and bile, the blood and grit, the hard mask.


End file.
